Full Circle (28 page)

“Why?” Tana's heart ached for him. “He's human too. More so than most, in fact.”

“You hardly know any boys. You never go out.”
Thanks to your darling stepson, Mom.
But actually, lately, it was thanks to law school. Ever since Harrison, she had begun to feel differently about men, in some ways more trusting and open, and yet so far no one measured up to him. He had been so good to her. It would have been wonderful to find someone like him. But she never had time to go out with anyone now. Between going to the hospital every day and preparing for exams … everyone complained of it. Law school was enough to destroy an existing relationship, and starting a new one was almost impossible.

“Just wait a couple of years, Mom. And then I'll be a lawyer, and you'll be proud of me. At least I hope you will.” But neither of them was too sure just then.

“I just want a normal life for you.”

“What's normal? Was your life so normal, Mom?”

“It started out to be. It wasn't my fault that your father was killed and things changed after that.”

“Maybe not, but it was your fault you waited almost twenty years for Arthur Durning to marry you.” And the truth was that if he hadn't had his heart attack, he might never have married her. “You made that choice. I have a right to my choices too.”

“Maybe so, Tan.” But she didn't really understand the girl, she didn't even pretend to anymore. Ann Durning seemed so much more normal to her. She wanted what every other girl wanted, a husband, a house, two kids, pretty clothes, and if she'd made a mistake early on, she'd been smart enough to do better the second time. He had just bought her the most beautiful sapphire ring at Carder's, and that was what Jean wanted for her child, but Tana didn't give a good goddamn.

“I'll call you soon, Mom. And tell Arthur I said congratulations to him too. He's the lucky one in this deal, but I hope you'll be happy too.”

“Of course I will.” But she didn't sound it when she hung up. Tana had upset her terribly, and she told Arthur about it, as much as she could, but he just told her to relax. Life was too short to let one's children get the best of one. He never did. And they had other things to think about. Jean was going to redecorate the Greenwich house, and he wanted to buy a condo in Palm Beach, as well as a little apartment in town. They were giving up the apartment she had had for years. And Tana was shocked when she discovered that.

“Hell, I don't have a home anymore either.” She was shocked when she told Harry that, but he looked unimpressed.

“I haven't had one in years.”

“She saicL there'll always be a room for me wherever they live. Can you imagine my spending the night in the Greenwich house, after what happened there? I get nightmares thinking of it. So much for that.” It depressed her more than she wanted to admit to him, and she knew that marrying Arthur was what Jean wanted, but somehow it seemed so depressing to her. It was so ultimately middle class, so boring and bourgeois, she told herself, but what really bothered her was that Jean was still at Arthur's feet after all the crap she had taken from him over the years. But when she told Harry that, he got annoyed with her.

“You know you've been turning into a radical, and it bores the hell out of me, Tan.”

“Have you ever considered the fact that you're more than a little right wing?” She started to look uptight.

“Maybe I am, but there's nothing wrong with that. There are certain things I believe in, Tan, and they aren't radical, and they aren't leftist, and they aren't revolutionary, but I think they're good.”

“I think you're full of hot air.” There was an unusual vehemence about what she said, but they had already disagreed about Vietnam several times. “How the hell can you defend what those assholes are doing over there?” She leapt to her feet and he stared at her, there was an odd silence in the room.

“Because I was one of them. That's why.”

“You were not. You were a pawn. Don't you see that, you fucking jerk? They used you to fight a war we shouldn't be fighting in a place we shouldn't be in.”

His voice was deathly quiet as he looked at her. “Maybe I think we should.”

“How can you say a dumb thing like that? Look what happened to you over there!”

“That's the whole point.” He leaned forward in his bed, and he looked as though he wanted to strangle her. “If I don't defend that … if I don't believe in why I was there, then what the hell good was it anyway?” Tears suddenly sprang to his eyes and he went on, “what does it all mean, goddamn it, Tan … what did I give them my legs for if I don't believe in them? Tell me that!” You could hear him shouting all the way down the hall. “I have to believe in them, don't I? Because if I don't, if I believe what you do, then it was all a farce. I might as well have gotten run over by a train in Des Moines…” He turned his face away from her and started to cry openly and she felt terrible. And then he turned to her, still in a rage. “Now get the hell out of my room you insensitive radical bitch!”

She left, and she cried all the way back to school. She knew that he was right—for him. He couldn't afford to feel about it as she did, and yet, ever since he had come back from Vietnam, something had begun to rage in her that had never been there before, a kind of anger that nothing could quench, and possibly never would. She had talked to Harrison about it on the phone one night and he had put it down to youth, but she knew it wasn't just that, it was something more. She was angry at everyone because Harry had been maimed, and if people were willing to take more chances politically, to stick their necks out … Hell, the President of the United States had been killed a year and a half before, how could people not see what was happening, what they had to do … but Tana didn't want to hurt Harry with all of it. She called him to apologize but he wouldn't talk to her. And for the first time in six and a half months since he'd gotten to Letterman, she didn't go to see him for three days. And when she finally did, she stuck an olive branch through the door of his room, and followed it in sheepishly.

“What do you want?” He glared at her, and she smiled tentatively.

“The rent, actually.”

He tried to suppress a grin. He wasn't angry at her anymore. So she was turning into a crazy radical. So what? That's what Berkeley was all about. She'd grow out of it. And he was more intrigued by what she had just said. “You found a place?”

“I sure did.” She grinned at him. “It's on Channing Way, a teeny little two-bedroom house with a living room and a kitchenette. It's all on one floor, so you'd have to behave yourself somewhat or at least tell your lady friends not to scream too loud,” they both grinned and Harry looked ecstatic at the news, “you're going to love it!” She clapped her hands and described it in detail to him, and that weekend the doctor let her drive him over there. The last of the surgeries had been completed six weeks before; his therapy was going well. They had done all for him they were going to do. It was time to go home. Harry and Tana signed the lease as soon as he saw it. The landlord didn't seem to object to the fact that they had different last names, and neither of them offered to explain. Tana and Harry shook hands with a look of glee, and she drove him back to Letterman. Two weeks later, they moved in. He had to arrange for transportation for his therapy, but Tana promised to take him. And the week after her exams, he got the letter congratulating him on his acceptance to Boalt. He sat in his wheelchair waiting for her when she got home, with tears streaming down his cheeks.

“They took me, Tan … and it's all your fault.…” They hugged and kissed, and he had never loved her more. And Tana knew only that he was her very dearest friend as she cooked him dinner that night and he uncorked a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne.

“Where did you get that?” She looked impressed.

“I've been saving it.”

“For what?” He had been saving it for something else, but he decided that enough good things had happened in one day to warrant drinking it.

“For you, you jerk.” She was wonderfully obtuse about the way he felt. But he loved that about her too. She was so engrossed in her studies and her exams and her summer job and her political ideas that she had no idea what was going on right beneath her nose, at least not in regard to him, but he wasn't ready yet anyway. He was still biding his time, afraid to lose.

“It's good stuff.” She took a big gulp of champagne and grinned at him, slightly drunk, happy and relaxed. They both loved their little, house and it was working out perfectly, and then she remembered that she had to ask him something. She had meant to ask him before, but with the rush to move, and buy furniture, she had forgotten to ask. “Listen, by the way, I hate to ask you this … I know it's going to be a drag … but…”

“Oh Jesus, now what? First she forces me to go to law school, and now God knows what other torture she has in mind…” He pretended to look terrified, but Tana looked sincerely grim.

“Worse than that. My mother's getting married in two weeks.” She had long since told him that, but she hadn't asked him to go to the wedding with her. “Will you come with me?”

“To your mother's wedding?” He looked surprised as he set down his glass. “Is that appropriate?”

“I don't see why not.” She hesitated, and then went on, her eyes huge in her face. “I need you there.”

“I take it her charming stepson will be on hand.”

“Presumably. And the whole thing is a little much for me. The happily married daughter with one child and another on the way, Arthur pretending that he and my mother fell in love only last week.”

“Is that what he's saying?” Harry looked amused and Tana shrugged.

“Probably. I don't know. The whole thing is just hard for me. It's not my scene.”

Harry thought it over, looking into his lap. He hadn't been out like that yet, and he had been thinking of going to Europe to meet his Dad. He could stop on the way … he looked up at her. There was nothing he would have denied her, after all she had done for him. “Sure, Tan, no sweat.”

“You don't mind too much?” She looked doggedly grateful to him and he laughed.

“Sure I do, but so do you. At least we can laugh together.”

“I'm happy for her … I just … I just can't play those hypocritical games anymore.”

“Just behave yourself while we're there. We can fly in and I'll head on to Europe the day afterwards. I thought I'd meet Dad in the South of France, for a while.” It was so good to hear him talking about things like that again. It was amazing to realize that only a year before he had been talking about playing for the rest of his life, and now, thank God, he was playing again, at least for a month or two, before he started law school in the fall. “I don't know how I let you talk me into that.” But they were both glad she had. Everything was working out perfectly. They had divided the chores in the house. She did the things he was unable to do, but it was amazing how much he did. Everything from dishes to beds, although he had practically strangled himself vacuuming one week, and now that was her task to do. They were both comfortable. She was about to start her summer job. Both of them thought life pretty damn grand in the summer of '65, and Harry picked up two of the stewardesses on their flight to New York in July. And Tana sat back in her seat, laughing at him, loving every minute of it, and thanking God that Harry Winslow IV was alive.

T
he wedding was simple and well done. Jean wore a very pretty gray chiffon dress, and she had bought a pale blue one for Tana to wear, in case she herself didn't have time to shop. It certainly wasn't the kind of thing she would have bought herself, and she was horrified when she saw the price tag on it. Her mother had bought it at Bergdorf's, and it was a gift from Arthur, of course, so Tana couldn't say anything.

Only the family were present at the ceremony, but Tana had insisted on bringing Harry along, much to his chagrin, since they arrived from the city in the same limousine. Tana was staying with him at the Pierre. She insisted to her mother that she couldn't leave him alone. And she was relieved that her mother and Arthur were leaving the next day on a honeymoon so she didn't have to stay in New York for an extended period after all. She would have refused to stay in the Greenwich house, and she was going to fly out of New York when Harry did. He was going to Nice to meet Harrison in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, and she was flying back to San Francisco to her summer job. And Jean and Arthur were threatening to come out and see her in the fall. Her mother looked pointedly at Harry each time she spoke of it, as though she expected him to disappear by then, and eventually Tana had to laugh at it.

“It's really awful, isn't it?” But the worst of all was Billy, who managed to sidle up to her halfway through the afternoon, drunk as usual, and make some sly comment about her boyfriend not being able to get it up, and he'd be glad to help her out anytime, as he recalled she had been a fairly worthwhile piece of ass, but just as she contemplated putting her fist through his mouth, she saw a larger one come whizzing by, meet Billy's chin, and Billy reeled backwards before collapsing neatly on the lawn. Tana turned to see Harry smiling in his wheelchair just behind where she stood. He had reached up and put Billy out cold with one blow and he was immensely pleased with himself.